The return of the pigs, sort of
Sep. 30th, 2015 07:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shallownessDownton 6.02
Isn’t it amusing that Amazon Prime is sponsoring Downton Abbey, when the product’s USP is speediness and the show couldn’t outrun snails at times? Or was it the Crawleys’ distaste for paying death duties that brought them together???
Some of this was marking time, like everyone redefining their stances over the hospital. The only interesting thing about that was Robert falling in with his mother and keeping his wife out of the loop when she had a perfect right to be there! He also totally got away with it.
I would love to see Elsie Hughes face off against the Blessed Lady Mary (snerk).
Thomas continued to make things worse for himself with unctuousness mixed with paranoia and desperately trying to get on with the new footman and make himself useful, while all the old staff have too much against him. I suppose they’re trying to parallel Baxter’s soft spot for him with Molesley looking out for Daisy. I am not even touching Daisy talking about the system, because that’s typically simplistic writing about politics.
And I want to move on to the actually interesting stuff: underneath the use of fat pigs. Mary was trying to be not selfish by her lights! I will give her that much credit. She was trying to be gracious to Carson and Mrs Hughes, although she didn’t have Cora’s sensitivity to the possibility that Mrs Hughes would like to arrange her own wedding day, thank you very much. Mary was trying to be nice to George (and Marigold as his satellite in her worldview) in taking them to see the pigs, and because she imperfectly understood the arrangement with the Drews (and didn’t think for a second about the awkwardness of it based on what she knew), reopened old wounds – I’ll get to that. The best thing she did was to take Anna to the doctor. She would save Anna from a fire before Edith (and maybe not Marigold but she’d resent the child.) Her bossiness was tempered by having been in Anna’s position, sort of. Thus sad Anna has become happy or hopeful Anna and Mr Bates (I found it adorable that she still calls him that, in a sea of anachronistic dialogue) doesn’t really know why.
And Edith was fascinatingly weak and dithery, and it was her past weakness (and her privilege allowing her to have what she wanted) that drove the Mrs Drew and Marigold storyline. In the now, she still let her editor bully her – why not sack him instead of letting him humiliate him in the office? (I’m not saying he was wrong or she was wrong in the direction they wanted to take the magazine, but his behaviour was enough to cut him off.) Why keep the flat if she keeps running to Rosamond to dither about what to do with her life? If she had decided to go to London with Marigold, it might have helped, although they’d still have run the risk of bumping into the Drews.
Because it was awful that the pig farmer had to leave his home because he’d tried to help Edith and, in keeping Edith and the Crawleys’ secret, hurt his wife badly. And if Mr Mason moves in his stead – two wrongs don’t make a right and it’s making the best of a bad situation. Edith’s parents were right, she should have told Mary, however horrid she would be about it. The fact that these were the consequences of Edith’s frailties, even her selfishness in some ways, was always there, adding depth to the melodrama.
I haven’t gone soft on Mary, BTW, that moment where she was all ‘remember when we carried a dead body, Anna, my friend, LOLZ?’ was really distasteful.
Isn’t it amusing that Amazon Prime is sponsoring Downton Abbey, when the product’s USP is speediness and the show couldn’t outrun snails at times? Or was it the Crawleys’ distaste for paying death duties that brought them together???
Some of this was marking time, like everyone redefining their stances over the hospital. The only interesting thing about that was Robert falling in with his mother and keeping his wife out of the loop when she had a perfect right to be there! He also totally got away with it.
I would love to see Elsie Hughes face off against the Blessed Lady Mary (snerk).
Thomas continued to make things worse for himself with unctuousness mixed with paranoia and desperately trying to get on with the new footman and make himself useful, while all the old staff have too much against him. I suppose they’re trying to parallel Baxter’s soft spot for him with Molesley looking out for Daisy. I am not even touching Daisy talking about the system, because that’s typically simplistic writing about politics.
And I want to move on to the actually interesting stuff: underneath the use of fat pigs. Mary was trying to be not selfish by her lights! I will give her that much credit. She was trying to be gracious to Carson and Mrs Hughes, although she didn’t have Cora’s sensitivity to the possibility that Mrs Hughes would like to arrange her own wedding day, thank you very much. Mary was trying to be nice to George (and Marigold as his satellite in her worldview) in taking them to see the pigs, and because she imperfectly understood the arrangement with the Drews (and didn’t think for a second about the awkwardness of it based on what she knew), reopened old wounds – I’ll get to that. The best thing she did was to take Anna to the doctor. She would save Anna from a fire before Edith (and maybe not Marigold but she’d resent the child.) Her bossiness was tempered by having been in Anna’s position, sort of. Thus sad Anna has become happy or hopeful Anna and Mr Bates (I found it adorable that she still calls him that, in a sea of anachronistic dialogue) doesn’t really know why.
And Edith was fascinatingly weak and dithery, and it was her past weakness (and her privilege allowing her to have what she wanted) that drove the Mrs Drew and Marigold storyline. In the now, she still let her editor bully her – why not sack him instead of letting him humiliate him in the office? (I’m not saying he was wrong or she was wrong in the direction they wanted to take the magazine, but his behaviour was enough to cut him off.) Why keep the flat if she keeps running to Rosamond to dither about what to do with her life? If she had decided to go to London with Marigold, it might have helped, although they’d still have run the risk of bumping into the Drews.
Because it was awful that the pig farmer had to leave his home because he’d tried to help Edith and, in keeping Edith and the Crawleys’ secret, hurt his wife badly. And if Mr Mason moves in his stead – two wrongs don’t make a right and it’s making the best of a bad situation. Edith’s parents were right, she should have told Mary, however horrid she would be about it. The fact that these were the consequences of Edith’s frailties, even her selfishness in some ways, was always there, adding depth to the melodrama.
I haven’t gone soft on Mary, BTW, that moment where she was all ‘remember when we carried a dead body, Anna, my friend, LOLZ?’ was really distasteful.
